WRITING IN THE DISCIPLINE SYLLABUS

II. Essence                                                  The Gift of the Magi is a story of a comic mistake of couple who had done sacrificial thing by selling the most valuable possession they have just to give their partner a very special gift. Della, the wife of Jim, sold her hair to Madame Sofraine worth $20 adding that to her money in-hand, $1.87, in buying a $21-dollar worth platinum fob chain for her husband’s golden watch. While, Jim had sold his one of the sources of his pride, the golden watch of his grandfather to his father and of his father to him for him to be able to purchase his gift, a comb, to her wife. But the sacrifice of the two couples had turned into a satirical mistake when they knew in the end that their gifts were eventually useless because it could not be used by both of them fo...

The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry ONE DOLLAR AND EIGHTY-SEVEN CENTS. THAT WAS ALL. AND SIXTY CENTS of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas. There was clearly nothing left to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating? While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the look-out for the mendicancy squad. In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an elect...